Strengthening Governance of the Swedish Skills System

Funded by the European Commission's Technical Support Instrument (TSI) and delivered by the OECD Centre for Skills together with the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities, this project supported Sweden in strengthening the multi-level governance of its national skills system, with the aim of reducing skills mismatches over the long term.

Work Advance was engaged by the OECD to lead Priority 3 of the project: analysing opportunities to improve Sweden's skills data infrastructure. Over the course of the contract, we mapped how skills-related data is currently collected, held and used across Swedish government and agencies, and carried out background research, analysis and stakeholder interviews to identify where the data infrastructure could be strengthened. We designed and led a virtual stakeholder workshop to test our preliminary findings, before developing and finalising the project's dedicated output on skills data infrastructure – complete with international case study examples, figures and a full evidence base.

We then carried this data infrastructure expertise through the project's later stages, drafting the relevant sections of the project's recommendations report and its accompanying implementation roadmap, and helping to moderate an in-person recommendations workshop and a capacity-building session with Swedish authorities.

The project's findings and recommendations, published by the OECD, set out how Sweden can build a more coherent, better-connected skills data infrastructure as part of a wider strengthening of skills governance – helping policymakers, employers and training providers work from a shared, reliable picture of the country's skills needs.